Thanks for the link. I'm not sure if it's what's actually used in the judging criteria, though. For example, the link says "When performed correctly the arc of the entry edge does not skid and the skater does not pivot (pre-rotate) off the toe pick." However, discussed in another thread, apparently skidding is common (in the axel for example) and people are allowed to and do rotate up to 90 degrees on their toe pick prior to takeoff, so that they are facing nearly (but not quite) fully forward when their feet leave the ground. The link also says " The minimum rotation for a single axel is 1&1/4 rotation in the air. The minimum rotation for a double axel is 2&1/4 rotations in the air. The minimum rotation for a triple axel is 3&1/4 rotations in the air." However, from the pre-rotation thread, a skater's edge is allowed to be up to 90 degrees rotated (or more precisely as long as it's still traveling/skidding in the same direction, i.e. backward for non-axel and forward for axel), the toe pick can pivot up to slightly less than 90 degrees (or more precisely, as long as the skate is not facing fully forward on takeoff; if the edge only rotated 45 degrees for example this means the toe pick could pivot up to but less than 135 degrees), and the skate can be under-rotated by 90 degrees on landing. So minimum rotation for a single axel is actually 3/4 rotation not the 1 1/4 rotation that the link says, for a double axel it's actually 1 3/4 rotation not the 2 1/4 rotation that the link says, etc. For the flip, it says "It is a major error for a skater to pivot to forward on the toe pick just before lifting off into the air." but a good number of skaters do pivot on the toe pick to end up facing roughly (but not quite) forward by the time the toe pick leaves the ice.

My point is I don't know if the link describes the "ideal" jumping positions or what not, but I'm not sure if the judging actually considers the points described. For example, a number of skaters do put their weight on their toe pick foot (in fact, put the entire blade down) when they jump -- is there actually a penalty for this in the GOE? Etc. And of course, apparently pivoting off the toe pick is not only allowed but strongly encouraged for multi-rotation jumps, to the extent that pretty much everyone is facing forward when they jump, with exceptions for a few skaters/jumps. Is it considered in the GOEs or landing rotation when a skater takes off while still facing backward rather than using the full "allowed" amount of pre-rotation? While the link pretty much simply says pre-rotation is wrong.

No one jumps triples and quads off a full blade. That's a myth perpetuated by non-skaters who barely every analyze jumps with video and only look at screen caps to link and bash skaters. By analyze I mean analyze - actually looking and seeing how the skater and the skate blade interacts with the ice on jump take-offs, and WHY it does that. Simply playing back a YouTube video at half speed looking for a specific screen cap to prove a point is not analysis. I am so tired of reading "so and so has full blade jumps" on a forum, when that simply isn't true. It doesn't matter what skater they're talking about (I've seen people say this of Asada, Sotnikova and others). Apart from the terrible toe axels that some skaters tack onto wonky jump landings to get the requirements, this almost never happens...

Both from the same jump (a flip jump) and the direction of travel is basically about up the center of the screen caps (bottom to top), to give you an idea of the pivot action. Some skaters pivot more, some a little less. The jump can pivot to forwards and still be clean on the take-off. A lot of ladies skaters actually do this (Asada and Sotnikova, for example) on a lot of their jumps. Kim's flip is more similar to the one linked above - that take-off is actually conducive to a bigger jump. Some coaches call it a "power take-off." The fuller pivot sometimes work better for skaters who don't jump as high, but rotate well and want to get into their rotations ASAP.

The "full blade" jumping that people complain about (which only happens sometimes on badly tacked on doubles in combinations or by low level skaters, which are usually severely prerotated anyways i.e. toe axels), is nothing more than a screen cap of the skater's body absorbing the impact of the jump take-off. I can write a whole page on this, but I think the best way to see how ridiculous it sounds is to put on some figure skates and try to jump any decently sized double, triple, or quadruple jump off the skate rocker and not possibly give yourself a concussion after your skate flies forwards and you fall and bang your head on the ice.

You can pivot to forwards on practically any non axel jump and get no deduction or GOE fault. The judges won't even be bothered by it. They also won't think of it, because they know (many of them being former skaters themselves) what happens on a jump. There's a nice little saying among many coaches: "All jumps take-off forwards." It's true. The ENTRANCE EDGE may be backwards, but the actual TAKE-OFF of the jumps are more often than not closer to forwards than backwards.

On an axel you can go sideways or a smidgen past sideways.

There is no elite skater competing right now that I know with straight back and forward jump take offs. Not on triples and quads (or double axels). Most probably wouldn't consider it safe to jump that way. I don't personally know any coaches that teach jumping that way. Even back in the 1940s when Dick Button was doing Triple Loops for the first time, he pivoted to forwars on his take-off and many of those skaters had the same reaction with the ice in their skate/ankles on jump take-offs, because to try to stop that is to willfully risk injury (Ankle Sprains, Back Issues, Knee Issues, possibly even broken bones, and other types of overuse injuries).

Did you even watch the video and look at the pic I posted? You image shows her after she's already rolled the skate around a bit. You can tell because her knees are very bent in your picture, which shows she has been on the ice a bit, longer than the pic I posted. But nice try

The ironic thing about it is that he posted it right after your screen cap (which is actually the video frozen at the landing point, Lol). I didn't think anyone was willing to lie so blatantly about something that is as clear as day, and publicly in video on YouTube and other sites.

Are you talking to me? I never said a peep about whether Adelina's 3T was under-rotated or not. Or whether Adelina deserved a level 3 or a level 4 on her step sequence. My whole point is quite the opposite. I do not have a sufficiently expert eye to determine these things (and, to tell the truth, I don't think that most of the impassioned posters on these threads do either).

I cannot tell from this picture whether her skate is actually on the ice or not quite yet. I cannot tell whether or not she had already made contact with the ice a fraction of a second earlier. From this picture I cannot tell what the angle of her skate is (compared to what?) From this picture I cannot tell exactly what direction her blade was pointing at take-off. From this picture I cannot tell how many degrees of rotation she had achieved before the picture was taken.

Frankly, I have little patience for these video wars where fans of one skater or another pretend to see evidence where non exists that their favorite skater is the bees knees and the other guy, yuk.

You can tell her skate is on the ice because there is snow coming up. Are you blind?

You can tell what angle her skate was at by watching any of the 100 videos on youtube where this screen cap was taken from. The Super Slow Mo of this jump is played in the Euro broadcast (Where Robin Cousins was commenting). They are 1080p resolution. Stream it to your HDTV through a Roku/Xbox/PS/ChromeCast/whatever. That should help you if your eyes are that bad.

Sotnikova doesnt' really have that many fans on this forum, and I'm certainly not what I would consider a fan. The Olympics are over, I couldn't care less about her to be honest. I do care about the cloud of misinformation and the severe bias and double standard regarding the criticism levied at her, though. It's not fair. I care about fair criticisms. There are no free passes with me, not even for your "queen."

Skating Skills...
Here are the number of 9.5s (or better) received in the Sochi Free Skate

Sotnikova: 4
Kim: 3
Kostner: 1
Everyone else: 0

Does anyone on earth think Sotnikova has better skating skills than Kim or Kostner, or even anywhere near the same league as them? She had received in the 7s her entire career, but suddenly a majority of the judges felt her basic skating skills had increased overnight into the 9s and more judges viewed her basic skating skills as superior to Kim and Kostner's. That's why I don't buy the B.S. that one or two rogue judges influenced the results. To me, the SS component is one example where it's clear the fixing of the results was widespread throughout the ISU and the federations, from the technical panel to the judges. There were many, many people involved in fixing the outcome for Russia, and that's why I continue to insist that the shroud of suspicion falls on the entire ISU and its federaions.

Great comments that get at the systematic heart of the problem. It could be expanded to include even more skaters, but that would go beyond the scope of the thread.

Yes, he is (although a few details are still left out there). So why are you saying that Yu-Na's second 3Lutz was underrotated? It's very clearly shown how 2.25 rotations in the air for a Lutz is acceptable, given that people frequently takeoff forwards on their toepick and it isn't heresy to do so. Yu-Na was fully in the air for at least 2.5 rotations on her 3Lutz. She comes down "shorter" in comparison to the direction of where the takeoff started, but she doesn't pre-rotate much at at all. She's doing a lot more air rotation at the start of the jump, so it's very understandable that there may be less at the end of the jump.

It's unfortunate that the discussion in the other thread was deleted, where I was going into more detail. Hopefully it gets restored so I don't have to repeat it all again.

Both from the same jump (a flip jump) and the direction of travel is basically about up the center of the screen caps (bottom to top), to give you an idea of the pivot action. Some skaters pivot more, some a little less. The jump can pivot to forwards and still be clean on the take-off. A lot of ladies skaters actually do this (Asada and Sotnikova, for example) on a lot of their jumps. Kim's flip is more similar to the one linked above - that take-off is actually conducive to a bigger jump. Some coaches call it a "power take-off." The fuller pivot sometimes work better for skaters who don't jump as high, but rotate well and want to get into their rotations ASAP.

The "full blade" jumping that people complain about (which only happens sometimes on badly tacked on doubles in combinations or by low level skaters, which are usually severely prerotated anyways i.e. toe axels), is nothing more than a screen cap of the skater's body absorbing the impact of the jump take-off. I can write a whole page on this, but I think the best way to see how ridiculous it sounds is to put on some figure skates and try to jump any decently sized double, triple, or quadruple jump off the skate rocker and not possibly give yourself a concussion after your skate flies forwards and you fall and bang your head on the ice.

You can pivot to forwards on practically any non axel jump and get no deduction or GOE fault. The judges won't even be bothered by it. They also won't think of it, because they know (many of them being former skaters themselves) what happens on a jump. There's a nice little saying among many coaches: "All jumps take-off forwards." It's true. The ENTRANCE EDGE may be backwards, but the actual TAKE-OFF of the jumps are more often than not closer to forwards than backwards.

On an axel you can go sideways or a smidgen past sideways.

There is no elite skater competing right now that I know with straight back and forward jump take offs. Not on triples and quads (or double axels). Most probably wouldn't consider it safe to jump that way. I don't personally know any coaches that teach jumping that way. Even back in the 1940s when Dick Button was doing Triple Loops for the first time, he pivoted to forwars on his take-off and many of those skaters had the same reaction with the ice in their skate/ankles on jump take-offs, because to try to stop that is to willfully risk injury (Ankle Sprains, Back Issues, Knee Issues, possibly even broken bones, and other types of overuse injuries).

Well, several things:

1. Seems like Yuna and Polina at least (I haven't looked at many of the skaters in detail) will do their lutzes and flips taking off still facing backward. As in, both the edge foot and the toe pick foot are still facing backward when they lift off the ice (as in, facing the backward half). While Mao, Adelina, Gracie, and probably others will do their lutzes and flips such that the edge foot lifts off still facing the backward half, but the toe pick foot will have rotated to be facing nearly directly forward by the time it leaves the ice. I'm puzzled by this. Certainly, on some jumps (like the salchow), pretty much everybody does the edge going backward, then pivot on toe pick until facing nearly directly forward before liftoff thing. But are the coaches for the former skaters so sadistic as to make them do an extra quarter or slightly more rotation in the air compared with the latter skaters, if points-wise there is no difference? Is there no advantage to taking off with the toe pick still facing in the backward half (rather than take the whole allowance and be facing nearly directly forward) at liftoff, either in terms of technique or in terms of points? If so, why do some skaters do it? Yes Trevor's site mentions that maybe coaches don't know about it, but these are the Olympics; I find it somewhat hard to believe that Olympic-caliber coaches don't know about these things. For example, in this thread, one of the points of discussion is whether or not it counts for anything that Yuna hardly pre-rotates and is still facing backward when she lifts off, in terms of how much she has to rotate in the air and the allowed under-rotation due to that. Again, I would find it very odd for her coach to tell her "yes I want you to do an extra quarter revolution compared to many other skaters" if it leads to possible under-rotations and points deductions for them. Why put in the extra effort?

2. I know the term has been mentioned a few times, but I'm confused as to what the "power take-off" thing (as opposed to a regular take-off) really means. Is it pivoting less on the toe pick for more power/height or something? I don't know if that will explain #1.

3. My question with full blade jumps is more about when the skater puts the full blade down for the toe pick foot, not the edge foot. Some skaters do it, some don't, but I don't know if there's any penalty for doing so. If not, why not? If so, where is it in the rules?

It's unfortunate that the discussion in the other thread was deleted, where I was going into more detail. Hopefully it gets restored so I don't have to repeat it all again.

Well, basically what you said is "logically" (in other words, based solely on your interpretation of the rules), the skater should get credit at the end of the jump if they prerotated less than is permissible. To me, that is not logical at all when the rules states you have to be within 1/4 of the landing. Under your interpretation, a skater has to be with 1/4 turn of the landing unless they prerotate less than they can, which is not a logical conclusion to me. If it were, they would have written the rule to reflect that, something along the lines of needing to be in the air 2.25 rotations. Again, if you know of anywhere in the rules in which this is clarified, rather than simply your speculation, I'd be interested in reading it so I can understand the rule better. You seem to be dismissive of anyone who disagrees with you on this and it based merely on how you logically concluded the rule is to be interpreted.

From my perspective, the rule seems to be to penalize skaters who "hook" the landing, regardless of how much they prerotate the jump. In the 3Lz, the landing was hooked, and the weight is on the blade and her knee starts to bend well before 1/4. I'm not sure how anyone can look at the slow motion and not see the skate spin around on the ice. With your interpretation, Yuna can prerotate 1/4 (which she did) and land forward and do a 180 degree turn on the ice to get backwards and get full credit for the jump.

Yes, he is (although a few details are still left out there). So why are you saying that Yu-Na's second 3Lutz was underrotated? It's very clearly shown how 2.25 rotations in the air for a Lutz is acceptable, given that people frequently takeoff forwards on their toepick and it isn't heresy to do so. Yu-Na was fully in the air for at least 2.5 rotations on her 3Lutz. She comes down "shorter" in comparison to the direction of where the takeoff started, but she doesn't pre-rotate much at at all. She's doing a lot more air rotation at the start of the jump, so it's very understandable that there may be less at the end of the jump.

It's unfortunate that the discussion in the other thread was deleted, where I was going into more detail. Hopefully it gets restored so I don't have to repeat it all again.

Maybe they deleted it because the discussion had nothing to do with ISU rules but everything with vanity.

The landing is directly related to where the takeoff is. Everything exists within a circle. Yu-Na's takeoff point is starting far earlier, thus her "acceptable landing point" is different than someone else who completely pre-rotates the jump.

Originally Posted by drivingmissdaisy

With your interpretation, Yuna can prerotate 1/4 and land forward and do a 180 degree turn on the ice to get backwards and get full credit for the jump.

That is not what I'm saying, nor is it what Yu-Na did. Also, jumps turn 180 degrees on the ice during the landing no matter where you land. Landing forwards just tends to make it so the blade is digging into the ice more.

On the Lutz jump, the "textbook" technique says that you don't pre-rotate on your toepick much at all. Therefore, how can we accurately judge this jump? Many people completely pre-rotate on their toepick and are in the air for far less time. Should this technique receive a deduction?

I don't believe it should receive a deduction. Ice skating exists on curves and most other jumps require pre-rotation, up to a full 1/2 turn. However, you also can't punish people for having better technique and/or doing a jump such that they are pre-rotating less and thus creating more air rotation at the start of the jump. You logically must give extra leeway on the landing point for less pre-rotation. A one-half scale makes the most sense (ie - if you pre-rotate 1/4 turn less, you get 1/8 turn leeway on the landing).

Figure Skating is currently completely mislead, hence why things like measuring jump rotation have not been given an official standard at all by the ISU. The decisions are made inconsistently, often without proper knowledge, and all behind the scenes.

With your interpretation, Yuna can prerotate 1/4 (which she did) and land forward and do a 180 degree turn on the ice to get backwards and get full credit for the jump.

That's exactly what he's saying, and it's illogical.

There are reasons beyond enforcing in air rotations why skaters are allowed to pivot that much on the take off, and have been doing so since the first triple jumps were being performed. The rule for landings is set in stone and has nothing to do with the take off. At all. The degree of take off pre-rotation does not affect how much a skater is allowed to hook a jump on the landing.

Any decent judge knows this. Even if Yuna had taken off completely backwards, that jump should still have been UR. Differences in technique do not give you a pass to UR over other skaters who got dinged on almost all their jumps for similar landings in the same exact competition.

Last edited by Components; 07-02-2014 at 01:37 AM.
Reason: Two Obvious Spelling Errors Were Fixed.

Also, Yuna and Polina do not take off straight backwards on their Lutzes. Anyone with a computer can load up the video and clearly see that.

That Lutz was UR, it's that simple and I'm bored with the matter because it seems like people are trying to say otherwise just to justify their belief that she deserved to win.

That's a nice strawman you got there. What I said was they take off while their skates are still facing the backward half. That's why I said they do an extra quarter rotation in the air, rather than half rotation, compared with skaters that pre-rotate until they're facing almost directly forward.

Originally Posted by Ultra

Here is the absolute rule on jump underrotations, an interactive animation from the nytimes:

We have a technical specialist in this thread and you're appealing to the New York Times?

That's a nice strawman you got there. What I said was they take off while their skates are still facing the backward half. That's why I said they do an extra quarter rotation in the air, rather than half rotation, compared with skaters that pre-rotate until they're facing almost directly forward.

We have a technical specialist in this thread and you're appealing to the New York Times?

They pivot at least a quarter rotation on the ice. The tech panel still UR'd one of Polina's jumps despite pre-rotating less than someone like Asada. This is a pretty clear indicator of what they're looking for on jump landings. They aren't counting in air rotations. They're looking at where the pick hits the ice on the landing.

Lutzes typically pivot less than flips and toe loops because it has a blocked take-off.

They pivot at least a quarter rotation on the ice. The tech panel still UR'd one of Polina's jumps despite pre-rotating less than someone like Asada. This is a pretty clear indicator of what they're looking for on jump landings. They aren't counting in air rotations. They're looking at where the pick hits the ice on the landing.

Nope. On Polina's under-rotated jump, for example, she's traveling toward the camera from the upper left to the lower right (rotating counterclockwise), and her toe pick foot is roughly perpendicular to the camera on lift off, indicating she had pivoted less than a quarter rotation on the ice (in fact, you can already see the toe pick foot's left side when it hits the ice, so it was significantly less). She had over a quarter rotation's worth of leeway on her takeoff. She similarly had over a quarter rotation's worth of leeway for her flip that was in a combo as well.

You also forgot to mention that Polina so badly under-rotated that jump that she fell. So it's more like Mao's triple axel in the short program (which was also called for UR), as opposed to Mao's UR calls in the free skate.

Originally Posted by Components

Lutzes typically pivot less than flips and toe loops because it has a blocked take-off.

I'm curious then, is it that skaters with correct Lutz edge technique (such as Yuna, Polina, and Kostner) tend to pre-rotate less with the toe pick (even with their flips) than skaters that tend to flutz (such as Adelina and Mao)? Kostner seems to be another skater whose skates will still be facing the backwards half (have over a quarter rotation of leeway) on liftoff for some of the jumps and she usually doesn't flutz, right; from her 2014 Worlds SP, the replay of her triple flip-triple toe combo is of her coming fairly directly toward the camera during the flip, and it's pretty clear that she's not even close to sideways on her toe pick foot when it leaves the ice (although it's not close to directly backward either).

Maybe there's something in the body mechanics about having the correct edge control for the lutz and flip that causes skaters who do them correctly (or at least, have the right edge) to also pre-rotate less with the toe pick. I guess when I go through analyzing jump rotations I should also keep track of which jump (i.e. if certain jumps are pre-rotated more) and if that skater has correct edges and see if there's a correlation.